Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Science, Technology and Personnel) Share this | Hansard source

This is the third motion on the indexing of DFRDB pensions to be moved in the last four years. The first was moved by the member for Lyne, the second was moved by me and now the member for Lyne has moved a third motion. I suggest this one will also be agreed to by all members. Yet still nothing has been done.

I support the member for Lyne in his comments. I introduced a private member's bill, through Senator Ronaldson, in the Senate to achieve the very issue we are talking about now. Even though the government agreed twice previously—in the member for Lyne's motion and my motion, which were exactly the same thing, to index DFRDB by the same mechanism as the age pension—on the voices in the last two motions, when a private member's bill went up to achieve the outcome, the government voted against it.

The government has form on this. In 2007 they went to the election promising to fix military superannuation, and they did not. They failed. They failed the veterans of Australia. In 2010, Tony Abbott went to the election with a policy to index DFRDB. On the back of that announcement at the 2010 election, we took a private member's bill into the Senate—because when we announce something at an election as something we are going to do, we follow through with it. But again the government voted against it, as did the Greens.

See this speech in context